Tag Archives: 12waystoget11 cuisenaire rods

As I have said countless times in previous posts, my 6th graders have been math buddies with a kindergarten class. The other kinder teacher and I spend numerous hours trying to create and plan different activities for both classes to do. One of the books I came across on Twitter was 12 Ways to Get 11 by Eve Merriam.

While planning, we purposely waited to do this activity when kindergarten was much more in tune with their addition facts and when 6th grade needed a break from testing.

I let my collaborative partner perform and read the book. She’s so expressive with her reading. The kinder students involved themselves at counting everything to 11. After the book was read, we counted things around the room to 11. For instance, students noticed that there were exactly 11 clouds hanging from the ceiling (complete coincidence!). Students also noticed 11 months that were listed next to the calendar (May was being used on the calendar).

Next, we let both sets of students explore combinations of 11. We explained that more than 2 numbers could add up to 11. My students love working with cuisenaire rods (their manipulative of choice).

This is what they came up with. I loved seeing how each set of students would represent the combinations. Kindergarten mostly just used the rods, where as my students had to represent the combinations with drawings, sketches, or some sort of visual representation.

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Here’s some footage of what we observed.

We wish we had more time to do more with this activity. We meant to go back to it, but other things get thrown at us at the end of the school year.